Re: Horse too fast!!

["Susan Evans Garlinghouse" <suendavid@worldnet.att.net>]

>In this case, "immerse" means total dependency on limited, tunnel vision
>"science" that slavishly follows the party line without having the
slightest
>interest in creative or innovative thought or action.


Oh, Tom.  What nonsense.  Read some of the actual work being done.  Or are
you claiming a vast, sinister conspiracy bent on brainwashing the
horse-owning public for it's own evil ends?  Is there a screenplay or
Harlequin Romance manuscript in the works here?

>
>In other words, you chose to ignore it
>

No.  I chose to read the entire paragraph and take it *all* into context.

However, since you're stuck on that one sentence, nobody's disagreeing that
fats are unnecessary if carbohydrates and protein meet the energy needs.
So, let's apply that to Real Life Endurance.  Based on Pagan's energy
expenditure formula, an average endurance horse finishing middle of the pack
on a fifty mile ride twice a month (which is done all the time) will burn an
additional 40 Mcals of net energy at the cellular level, which after you
allow for the usual losses of metabolism, means you need to supply roughly
60 Mcals of dietary energy just to repay the losses during those rides.
That's in addition to maintenance requirements of what we assume is a horse
at, say, moderate work, assuming the horse gets a little exercise of some
sort between rides.  So this guy's total monthly gross energy requirements
are going to be roughly 750 Mcals of energy, or 25 Mcals a day.  Assuming
the 950 pound horse is eating 2% of his BW per day in grass hay, that's 15
Mcals taken care of, leaving a deficit of  10 Mcals.  To supply that with
carbos, I need to feed about six pounds of straight corn, or seven pounds of
COB, each and every day.  If he doesn't eat it on travel days, or because
his guts aren't good during the ride, then he has to make up that deficit
other days, and we won't even worry about extra calories burned up because
he's hyper or because you're top tenning or because you weight 250 pounds
without tack.

Seven pounds of grain isn't a big deal for a TB, for for a little, tiny
Arab, that's alot of grain and there are SCADS of horses that turn into
idiots on more than a couple pounds of grain.  Others WILL run into
metabolic problems (not all of them, but some---I have one of them),
especially if they don't get exercised every single day and don't have turn
out.  Just because race track people blithely feed 14 pounds of grain a day
to TBs and get away with it doesn't mean it's the optimal diet for endurance
horses when better solutions are available.

Or, boy howdy, you can feed just half of that grain, throw in a cup or so of
oil, supply surplus calories so you can maintain body condition and not
worry about all the REAL problems that do exist with grain overload.  It's
not an excess of fat, it still supplies plenty of all the other nutrients,
and like it or not, it's proven in the EQUINE exercise literature as a valid
feeding protocol.

Read my lips, Tom---ENDURANCE HORSES ARE NOT THOROUGHBREDS.  Better yet,
read ALL the literature, not just the ones that support your own agenda.


>
>I can't disagree with that, either, especially  the "may be" part. However,
>the first sentence was the lead of the paragraph--the topic sentence. Lewis
is
>saying that you have a choice to feed fat, and that it's a high energy
content
>nutrient, but if you feed adequate carbohydrate, it's not necessary.

High energy content, yes.  Highest energy content, no.  And it doesn't come
without some baggage at the energy requirements endurance horses have.
Nobody said feeding fats is a federal requirement, Tom.  The only one that
gets all worked up in a fret in the publications (TrailBlazer for you, the
scientific journals for the rest of us evil Poobahs) is you.


>Most have to do with how muscles process fuels. For example, a diet rich in
>carbohydrate nearly eliminates the use of fat as a muscular fuel--no matter
>how much fat you feed. The athletic body perfers carbohydrate.

In other words, more human studies.


>I don't get a free ride to ICEEPs--so I attend the ones I can afford to
>attend--3 of them thus far. Very pleased, though, that my tax dollars are
>sending you to places where you'll expand your knowledge, somewhat.

Actually, the funding for me to present my research at ICEEP was provided
entirely by the Japan Racing Association.  It covered my airfare, I paid for
the rest myself.  As I have to every other research meeting I've gone to,
the majority of the expenses for me to put together slides and handouts when
I travel to talk to different endurance groups, also the $10,000 or so I
paid by myself to conduct the research in the first place.  Not one thin
dime came from tax dollars.  Not one.  If anyone wants to know why someone
who does endurance horse research only gets to a ride once a year as an
entrant, it's because the entry money went instead for research expenses and
airfare to learn the data from the source.  Starting next year, it'll be
going to pay for four years of vet school, and not one dime of THAT will be
coming from tax dollars, either.  And THAT, Tom, is called putting your
money where your mouth is.

The
>proceedings will be out soon enough.

Good point.  Guess I better finish the final edits for my article that'll be
in it.  You can't miss it, it'll be in the section under APPLIED exercise
physiology.


As always, Tom, you're a joy to poke at.  Gotta go work.  Bye.

Susan G